Yuh must have ambition

by

Yes, peeps. I'm going to join my wonderful batch-mates from the Excelsior graduating class of 1977 for a special devotion in the school's auditorium as we kick off our 40th anniversary reunion week of activities. Yeah, a dog of my age is definitely not a puppy. Is plenty breadfruit crops me see inna my days!

I still remember being the untidy boy who was chief troublemaker, rabble-rouser, cheerleader and class clown in high school.

And I remember that boy transitioning into a ranting, rebellious Rasta youth at the Cultural Training Centre now known as Edna Manley College.

I was a youth who ate cornbread and ripe banana for lunch every day, always walked with a little bag that held a bamboo chillum pipe, chanted radical dub poetry, and called himself 'Iblacka'.

And I recall that youth growing into a man who established a multilayered career as a youth and community worker doing projects all around the island with Groundwork Theatre and later with the Area Youth Foundation, working as a teacher at Dinthill and Ferncourt, as well as a lecturer at Excelsior Community College and Edna Manley while performing as a comedian all over the world either solo or as part of the Bello and Blakka duo. But guess what? I am also back in study mode as a UWI grad student.

Yes, I'm still learning, growing and changing. We will literally die of stagnation if we get too complacent with life. I firmly believe that resistance to change is the greatest enemy of that thing called ambition.

It's also the biggest obstacle to our salvation. That's why I happily embrace Romans 12 verse 2 and stopped being 'conformed to this world' but instead became transformed by the renewing of my mind.

Yeah, there are still challenges but mi nah complain. According to Jeff Bezos, best known as founder, chairman, and CEO of Amazon.com, "What we need to do is always lean into the future; when it changes against you - what used to be a tailwind is now a headwind - you have to lean into that and figure out what to do because complaining is not a strategy."